


sparks fly whenever you smile

by grim_lupine



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Erotic Electrostimulation, Established Relationship, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grim_lupine/pseuds/grim_lupine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tris hasn’t lost control of her magic in years, not even in the deepest depths of her anger. She’s spent too long reminding herself of the consequences of doing so, trying to braid calmness and resolve into her hair alongside the weight of lightning, wind, and the tides. </p><p>She should have expected that if anything were to unravel her from the inside out, it would be Briar Moss, that infuriating, wild-eyed boy that she loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sparks fly whenever you smile

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to pageleaf for looking this over for me, as she always does. ♥ 
> 
> Lyrics from "Sparks Fly" by Taylor Swift.

Tris hasn’t lost control of her magic in years, not even in the deepest depths of her anger. She’s spent too long reminding herself of the consequences of doing so, trying to braid calmness and resolve into her hair alongside the weight of lightning, wind, and the tides. 

She should have expected that if anything were to unravel her from the inside out, it would be Briar Moss, that infuriating, wild-eyed boy that she loves. 

They spend a hot, damp-aired afternoon together bringing another kind of sweat to their skin, Tris taking him inside herself as she licks the taste of impending rain from the hollow of his throat. Briar doesn’t talk when he’s in bed, but he makes beautiful sounds when she clenches around him, and breathes out her name when he comes. 

Afterward, he lays his head upon her thigh and licks into her hungrily, chasing after the taste of himself and lapping at her nub until Tris is digging her nails into the back of his neck, careless in her need. Briar told her he loves doing this, the first time he got between her thighs, and since then she’s found no reason to doubt him — not with the way he mouths at her and sucks and licks and near-suffocates himself in her cunt, coming away with his face all wet and his eyes hungry-black. 

Today is one of those days where peaking twice has barely quelled the fire in Tris’s belly, and she tells Briar to put his fingers in her and quivers under his wicked tongue, and the air around them is so hot and ready to break, and she can feel it in her _bones_ — 

Briar’s head comes up, and he blinks at her, looking faintly startled.

“ _What_ ,” Tris says, voice ragged with thwarted completion, and she tugs Briar’s hair to pull him back down, because she’d been so _close_. 

“...Nothing,” Briar says at last, and his mouth twitches into a slow smirk for some reason that Tris will drag out of him later, after he — _oh_ — after he puts his mouth back on her and works his tongue against her nub until she breaks against his mouth, his fingers curled deep and satisfying within her. 

It isn’t until Tris can breathe properly again that she identifies the slight, pins-and-needles fuzziness dancing over her skin, raising the hair on her body; her hand is still cupping the back of Briar’s neck, fingers pushed into his hair, and she jerks back immediately, panic sending her stomach swooping low. If she’s lost enough control to let this much lightning slip free, she easily could have done much worse, and that is the stuff of Tris’s nightmares. 

“You didn’t hurt me,” Briar says immediately when he sees her face, shimmying up her body until he can touch her cheek. “You wouldn’t. It just felt a little strange.” He smirks again, that same satisfied, irritating, intoxicating smirk that always strikes cleanly into Tris’s chest. “Besides,” he says. “I took it as a compliment.”

“Idiot,” Tris says, rolls her eyes to keep the relief from showing in them, though she knows Briar sees it anyway. She kisses him firmly on the mouth, then gets up to find a cloth to clean the both of them. 

Outside, rain comes down in a quiet roar, lending the air a clean, cool scent. Tris cracks the window a little further and calls a breeze toward her, brings the curl of freshness inside to cool the room. 

Briar says quietly, behind her, to himself, “It wasn’t… _bad_.”

There is a strange tone in his voice that tickles at the back of Tris’s mind, that she forgets for the moment, but that sparks something within her as she falls asleep at Briar’s side later that night.

*

It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t _bad_.

As plain-spoken as Briar usually is, he talks around the things he means, at times. The things he wants, isn’t sure he will get. Tris is used to filling in the spaces between his words, and flatters herself that she succeeds most of the time, at least. 

She turns the words _it wasn’t bad_ over and over in her mind for days, picking apart the hesitant emphasis Briar had put on the last word, as if he’d come to a realization in that moment. Tris wishes she had not had her back to him then, wishes she could have seen his face to _know_. 

Tris can only go with her instincts in the end. Briar takes her to bed that night, goes easily onto his back when she pushes him down and straddles his body. His gray-green eyes light up when she pushes his arms above his head and taps his wrists to tell him to keep them there. “Got plans for me, Coppercurls?” he says slyly, amusement and arousal curling together in his voice. 

“Yes,” Tris says composedly, and adds between their minds, _always_. 

Briar’s face softens in a way he’d most likely be horrified at if he could see himself; as he can’t, Tris can continue to watch the sweet curve of his mouth as she runs a hand down his bare chest to the waistband of his trousers, and tugs the rest of his clothing from his body. 

Bare, Briar is beautiful to look at. He always is, anyway. Tris likes to look at him when he is utterly conscious of his own beauty, like now, lingering in a smug, boneless sprawl of taut muscles and golden-brown skin. Tris lays a hand across the warm flat of his belly, and watches his eyes carefully as she reaches her other hand to the thin braid framing her face. 

His eyes widen; she tugs the tie from the end and his breath hisses out between his teeth. 

Tris doesn’t move any further, waiting for a sign. At last, Briar laughs a little ruefully, says, “Caught that, did you? Go on, then.” There’s a slight flush kissing his cheekbones, and Tris feels her pulse start to pound between her legs. 

“If you don’t like it, don’t be shy,” she says as she starts to carefully comb out her braid, gathering friendly sparks of lightning between her fingers. She stops halfway through and ties off the braid again; that’s enough for her purposes. 

When Tris looks into Briar’s face again, she sees the gleam of his eyes and the white-edged press of his lips, would think it nervousness if not for the way he shifts in place and drags his hand down, down, down…

“Ah,” Tris says, catching his hand by the wrist. “Not just yet.” She presses her thumb into his pulse to feel the gallop of it for a moment, then releases him so he can plant his hands flat on the bed at his sides. 

This isn’t something Tris has ever tried before, but she knows lightning, and she knows control, and she knows _Briar_. Briar, with his clever thief-boy hands, loves it when she puts hers on his body, some feline soul within him basking in being petted and caressed. Tris puts both her hands on Briar’s stomach again and draws them slowly up his body, catches the curves of her palms over the ripple of his muscles and the hard points of his nipples; her hands are warm with lightning, just a little bit of it, and Briar tightens up and shivers under her touch. 

_Still strange?_ Tris asks, touches the surface of Briar’s hunger, his impatience, the warmth he always feels when he’s with her. 

_Yes_ ,” Briar says. _Keep going._

“Hmm,” Tris says aloud, and pinches Briar’s left nipple sharply, without warning, gives him a jolt as she does it. Briar lets out a curse like someone’s smacked it out of him, arches up into her hand. She does it again, again, tugs at the hard little bud until Briar’s breathing raggedly out of his half-open mouth, twisting the sheets up in his clenched hands. 

Tris bends to kiss Briar’s wet, chapped lips, nudges them further apart with her tongue and breathes a satisfied sound against his mouth when she feels him start to reach for her, before he remembers himself and resettles his hands at his sides. Briar kisses like he’s starving for it, but Tris hasn’t a leg to stand on there. There is no end to the things she wants from him, never will be. 

Under her, Briar squirms, rocks his hips upward. Tris lets her weight settle on him as she breaks away from his mouth, feels him half-hard against the heat of her cunt. She allows herself to rub against him once, twice, until he throws his head back and groans aloud, “ _Tris_ ,” voice plaintive and rough. 

The long curve of his throat is gorgeous. Tris kisses down it three times, and then moves away to slip out of her dress and her underclothes. “Patience,” she says, sliding off her glasses and wiping them with her discarded dress. With them off, she can’t see Briar’s face, but she can feel the endlessly rewarding heat that slides through him as he looks at her bare, his bone-deep conviction of her beauty. 

Tris’s face goes warm from ear-tips down, and the curse of her red hair and the skin that comes with it is that it shows. When she puts her glasses back on, she sees Briar grinning at her, sly and boyish.

“Come here,” he coaxes, props himself up on one elbow and pats the bed at his side. “Come here and let me touch you, please, I want it.” Tris is weak for that sweet, knowing curl in his voice, weak for _him_ , and he knows it too. 

Briar goes satisfyingly silent when she gets back on the bed and curls her hand around his cock; his teeth click together sharply when she draws her thumb up the length of it, circling the sticky-wet head and licking her thumb clean when she’s done. 

“After,” Tris says, lets a little steel into her voice. “You can touch me after I’m done with you.” When she’s done with him, she still might not let him use his hands, though; maybe she’ll just lower herself to meet his mouth and take what she wants from him until she’s satisfied. 

Briar catches that thought from her mind; Tris knows from the way he passes his tongue over his lips, like he’s thinking about the taste of her already. His cock jumps, hard against his stomach, and even Tris is rapidly losing the patience for her own teasing. 

Briar’s thighs open for her when she pushes them apart, and he plants his heels on the bed, dimpling the sheets. Tris gathers the barest hint of lightning to her fingers and drags her hands up his muscled calves with the soft scritch of hair, dips her fingers into the bend of his knees, palms the smooth, warm skin of his thighs. He shakes under her hands, so responsive it makes her go lightheaded. 

“Turn over,” Tris says, voice nearly cracking on the last word from how dry her throat’s gone. Briar goes onto his stomach so fast he almost kicks her, and Tris watches the flexing of his hips as he rubs himself against the bed to get a little of the friction he’s been looking for. 

She lets him have his moment while she retrieves the little tin she keeps on her dressing table; when she pops it open, the cool mint scent of the cream inside wafts up toward her. Briar had made this cream for her, in fact, though they’d since run through the first batch of it. He’d told her later, grinning ruefully, that if he’d realized what use they’d be putting it to, he might have picked a scent he wasn’t likely to run across so often, since the association tended to cause him some...difficulty. 

Tris dips her fingers in the cream and rubs them together to get them slick, and the scent grows sharper, and Briar lets out a little hitching breath and buries his face deeper into the cradle of his arms. His hips cant slightly upward. Tris _wants_ , so strongly her hands tremble when she grasps Briar’s hip with one, uses the other to thumb a firm line from his tailbone downward. 

Briar spreads his legs further, arches up into her hand. Tris rubs her thumb against his hole and then pushes it in, just the tip. He’s hot and clenching around her, and Tris remembers again how much she loves doing this for him, working him open with cruel patience until he’s laughing and gasping, cursing and praising her hands in the same breath. 

That isn’t all they’re doing right now, Tris reminds herself, and she pulls her hand away and checks in, _Briar, do you still want —_

 _Yes_ , Briar says, blasts her with the frantic edge of his need that has him sweating and and begging for it. _I want it, I promise, just do it_. 

That’s all she needs. Tris pushes her forefinger into him, careful but not slow, tingling with lightning, and Briar gasps out something that might be her name, if it were intelligible in any way. Two fingers gets her a muffled “Gods _above_ ,” and when she rubs them deliberately over that spot inside him, he throws a hand out blindly behind him until he’s grasping the meat of her thigh, digs his nails in _hard_.

“Be good,” Tris says absently, taps his hand away, and Briar says breathlessly with an undercurrent of wild, distracted laugher in his voice, “I’m always good, Coppercurls.” 

He isn’t, really, in that he embodies mischief more thoroughly than anyone Tris has ever known; but he is, in that he’s one of the best men Tris has had the privilege of having in her life, and he’s _hers_ , and she loves him. 

“You’re a menace,” Tris says aloud, and kisses the place where she’s working her fingers into his body, lets her tongue flicker out. Briar cries out, and the back of his neck is flushed pink, and Tris doesn’t think either of them will last much longer than this. 

Indeed, it takes only a third finger stretching him open, pushing her lightning from the tight furl of his hole to as deep inside him as she can get, before Briar’s going tight around her fingers and squirming like he’s torn between getting away from her and trying to take everything she’ll give him. The sound of his panting goes straight to Tris’s cunt. She curls her fingers and rubs against the spot inside him unrelentingly, pushes her glasses up with the back of her other hand from where they’re slipping down her nose, and Briar’s voice breaks cleanly in two over her name. 

His hands are clenched so tight in the sheets she fears she might need to help him pry them open afterward; what little she can see of his face is a hint of red, bitten mouth and dark lashes brushing sweat-dampened cheeks, and he is beautiful. 

Tris reaches under Briar to palm his cock, finds the mess he’s made all over his stomach and strokes his softening cock anyway, just to feel the oversensitive, pleasure-and-pain push of his body back into hers. 

Briar breaks away from her and turns over onto his back, bares himself to her as only someone as completely unused to the concept of self-consciousness as him could do. His eyes are a glossy, dazed green, his belly spattered with his come. Tris wants to lick him clean until he rises hard under her tongue again. 

Briar catches the intent of her gaze, and a little of his smugness comes back to him, that intoxicating light that tips his mouth into a grin and puts that throaty, sly note in his voice, that reminds Tris that she’s so wet that her thighs are slick and frictionless when they rub together.

“Your turn. Come take what you want, beautiful,” Briar says, bright-eyed; and he _means_ the endearment he drops so casually, and it makes Tris’s eyes burn for a moment, just a moment. 

Tris throws her leg over Briar’s body to straddle him, walks up the bed on her knees until she’s hovering over his face. She doesn’t get a chance to lower herself down before Briar grabs her thighs and _pulls_ her down to his mouth, getting his tongue into her like he’s dying for it. He fucks her with his tongue, a wet wriggle inside her that makes her clench, empty. He licks a long, thorough stripe through her folds, the tip of his nose rubbing briefly against her nub, tongue following after it, and Tris holds him right there where she needs him. She can _hear_ how wet she is, the slick, sucking noises making her belly tighten and her ears burn; Briar lets her use his mouth, working herself against his clever tongue until the tension in her gut snaps and she comes, toes curling, getting a hungry little groan from Briar in response. 

Briar doesn’t let her come down from it, just pushes her further up and back on her knees so he can get his fingers into her, and he fucks Tris through to another peak, her body trembling on the sweet edge of too much. Tris moves off of him on shaky legs and falls onto the bed at his side, watches him suck his fingers thoroughly clean with flashes of pink tongue and wicked eyes. Tris grabs the edge of the sheet and wipes Briar’s face clean of her release, quirks a smile at him when he smirks at her afterward, and she lets him pull her into a languid, filthy kiss full of the taste of herself. She bites Briar’s mouth gently, and taps it afterward with a final jolt as a parting touch before she re-braids her hair all the way back to the ends of it. 

Briar watches her with half-lidded eyes, says with rumbling, lazy satisfaction, “That was fun.”

Tris opens her mouth to respond, then shuts it; decides to voice the thought that’s been niggling at her through her mind instead, where they can’t misunderstand each other. _You weren’t scared,_ she says, doesn’t let it tip upward into a question though she knows Briar can tell she wants to. _You weren’t scared I’d lose control and hurt you, not even for a second_.

Briar eyes her carefully for a moment. _Before, when we were kids, you know I was_ , he says. _Not of you, really, but of what you could do if you forgot yourself_. 

_And now?_ Tris says, heart in her throat. Because he knows Tris knows there is a real, serious heart within him that he will use when it is needed, Briar comfortably indulges in his puppyish, pliant side when they’re together; his trust is one of the most valuable things Tris has ever been given. 

Briar smiles, her grown-up, resolute thief-boy who’s seen too much ugliness and comes to her trusting her to keep the darkness away. _Now, I don’t think there’s anyone better in control of themselves, Coppercurls_ , he says. _You’d cut your own hands off before you’d hurt me. And the things you can do —_ he breaks off, and Tris can feel the bright ember of truth in his mind when he continues, _When things go bad, there’s no one I’d rather have at my back_. 

Tris exhales, blinks rapidly. Her childhood demons are never fully eradicated, any more than Briar’s or Sandry’s or Daja’s are, but for now, Briar’s put them firmly to rest once more. 

_Thank you_ , she says, and it’s the _I love you_ that she means as well, that she knows Briar hears from the soft tilt of his mouth and the way he pulls her into his side, reaching up to tug her braid with possessive, fearless hands.


End file.
